A New Peer Support Specialist Intervention: Social Connections Targeting Isolated and Lonely People

Peer Support Specialists, clinicians and researchers working each day to develop new peer support interventions to help clients.  I will try to highlight some of these efforts with the hope that you will:

1.     Learn from what others are doing, as you consider the clients you are working with.

2.     Consider adapting these interventions for your setting.  Researchers are publishing these descriptions with the hope that the successful interventions will be used by the community.

3.     Learn from what is not successful.  These studies often identify challenges in solving a clinical problem.  Some of the best lessons are found in how others have failed or had difficulty with their solution.

So if you are interested in new interventions for Peer Support Specialists, watch for this series of posts.

Last year a group of researchers led by Dr. Johanne Eliacin from the Veterans Administration, published a summary of their efforts to develop an intervention to address loneliness using Peer Support Specialists (Eliacin et al., 2023).  Loneliness is an international concern these days, given the trends in social isolation and its link to physical and mental health.  Unfortunately, it is often very challenging to address loneliness, as it is not a traditional healthcare issue, and isolated and lonely people are often ambivalent about getting more connected.

These researchers decided to try to use a virtual group program led by Peer Support Specialists. They gave out a brief survey to 200 Veterans getting care in the VA Healthcare System, to identify those who were lonely.  They found that 39% met criteria for being “socially isolated”.  Most surprising, 60% of these isolated Veterans said they would be interested in programming to help reduce that isolation.  When the Peer Support Specialists invited them to be part of the intervention, a full 88% participated.  That is an exceptionally high rate.  Only 35% dropped out after starting this 12-week intervention. 

The intervention involved weekly virtual meetings between the client and the Peer Support Specialist.  Meetings could be in a group or individual format, and involved direct peer support, as well as help with connecting and navigating to other social and healthcare services to reduce isolation.  Every participant expressed satisfaction with the intervention – an unusually high rate (100% satisfaction).  After participation, the Veterans were found to have lower levels of social isolation and higher levels of social support, documenting that this Peer Support Specialist intervention appears to work exactly as the researchers planned. 

What can you do with this information?  You may want to read the article (it is linked below).  Consider if you can try to provide this intervention in your work setting.  You should be able to find a large number of clients who are isolated, and clinicians are increasingly aware of isolation as a health issue and so are likely to refer to you.  You may want to adapt this intervention to fit your clients or your setting, but I would try not to change too much if you want to take advantage of the success that this group had.  You may want to even consider contacting the researchers to talk about the study or even future projects that you could collaborate in.  Most people are hesitant to contact researchers, feeling that researchers will be too busy to talk with them.  My experience is very different.  I find that many researchers LOVE to talk about their work with anyone sincerely interested in trying to use it to improve healthcare.

I think this study is worth remembering because it is a clear example of a successful intervention that was developed specifically to be provided by Peer Support Specialists to address a very high priority problem.  Just another sign that clinicians and researchers are recognizing the important role that Peer Support Specialists can play in addressing key issues in the healthcare system.

REFERENCES

Eliacin, J., Patterson, S. M., Mendez, D. M., Burgess, D. J., Traylor, M. H., Borden, M. Y., ... & Matthias, M. S. (2023). Findings from a Peer-Facilitated, Social Isolation Intervention in the Veterans Health Administration Healthcare System: A Mixed-Methods, Pilot Feasibility Study. Journal of general internal medicine, 38(16), 3460-3471.

KEY WORDS: Peer Support Specialist, Social Support, Loneliness, Social Isolation, Peer Support, Peer Support Training, Peer Support Certification, Peer Support Jobs